The Evolution of Republican Government 333 Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com- munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but,even more seriously,posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up"mobilization. For Republican-era central governments,the primary ordering prin- ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai,Beiyang and KMT regimes included:promoting administrative and fiscal centralization,rationaliza- tion and standardization;the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development;and civilianizing imperatives to the contrary-militarily crushing open oppo- sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building,it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses.These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic,which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice.In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization,unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel,and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure.Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making.To a greater rather than to a lesser extent,weak central projective capacity,internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea- tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing,the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged.This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution,when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government.Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914,things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period,insofar as the central government had any revenues at all,they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8.Young,The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai,pp.148-155.On warlord actions in the capital,see Chien Tuan-sheng,The Government and Politics of China,pp.65-76,and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour,see Ch'i Hsi-sheng,Warlord Politics in China, 19/6-28(Stanford:Stanford University Press.1976),pp.185-195.The Evolution of Republican Government Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. Kai-shek became near hysterical about the continued existence of Com￾munists who not only challenged his government from within the body politic of China but, even more seriously, posed an alternate and highly threatening model of "bottom-up" mobilization.8 For Republican-era central governments, the primary ordering prin￾ciple was rapidly to build and project central state and bureaucratic power in order to create a viable and legitimate form of civil government. Subsidiary components of this larger agenda that remained virtually unchanged throughout the Yuan Shikai, Beiyang and KMT regimes included: promoting administrative and fiscal centralization, rationaliza￾tion and standardization; the central state attempting to set the standard in programmes for modern education and industrial development; and - civilianizing imperatives to the contrary - militarily crushing open oppo￾sition whenever it was feasible to do so and opting for inclusion and co-optation when it was not. Unfortunately for the evolution of post-1911 government in China, while the last years of the Qing bequeathed a largely unaltered agenda for central government action and state-building, it also passed on a complex of very serious structural weaknesses. These were exacerbated by the political volatility of the early Republic, which made the goals doubly difficult to realize in practice. In spite of the standing desire of all central government actors to promote centralization, unity and civil legitimacy, central state capacity was extremely limited with respect to the key issues of taxation and personnel, and the project of building civilian institutions was consistently undercut by the twin phenomena of internal division and external military pressure. Internally weak and fragmented government institutions in turn led to short-term horizons and political expedience, and the continued existence of armed challengers within China and aggressive imperialism from without mandated the continued importance of the military within government decision-making. To a greater rather than to a lesser extent, weak central projective capacity, internal divisions and external military pressure remained constraining and constant fea￾tures throughout the Republican period. During the last years of the Qing, the rate of real taxation in many parts of China had increased because of the proliferation of locally imposed surtaxes and sub-bureaucratic offices while the quotas remitted to the central government remained unchanged. This situation worsened after the 1911 Revolution, when provinces refused to remit anything at all to the central government. Although Yuan Shikai briefly got tax receipts coming into the capital in 1914, things so deteriorated after his death that during the Beiyang period, insofar as the central government had any revenues at all, they were provided via the remission of the remainder of salt tax funds collected by customs and Sino-foreign tax collecting 8. Young, The Presidency of Yuan Shih-k'ai, pp. 148-155. On warlord actions in the capital, see Chien Tuan-sheng, The Government and Politics of China, pp. 65-76, and on the structural systems behind warlord behaviour, see Ch'i Hsi-sheng, Warlord Politics in China, 1916-28 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), pp. 185-195. 333